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Meg Bear's avatar

Such an important topic - where are you teaching - please sign me up as a guest, I'd love to be part of this conversation. While this is very unsettling and difficult for young adults I also see this as a generation that will teach us new skills - adaptability, risk taking and creativity - not just for employment but for society in general. I think we all have a lot to learn and I believe it's young adults who will teach us.

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Jason Averbook's avatar

Would love that Kate - what is the best way to connect with you? Thanks for the read!

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Louis's avatar

The irony of ironies is that even with the diminishing ROI, the competition to get into the leading (and most expensive) universities is more challenging than ever.

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Kate's avatar

Hi Jason, I loved your post. I have made the pivot as well to address this gap between school and work. I taught a professional practices course a couple of years ago while I was writing my book, and my experience as a faculty member was enlightening. I'd love to chat sometime and maybe collaborate on something in the future.

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Al Dea's avatar

Great stuff as always Jason. A few other thoughts:

1) In your Triple Threat Section: One other topic to consider is around the delayering 2.0 of middle management especially in white collar knowledge working professions (not to be confused with what we did in the 80's...) and the general lack of hiring that's going on in white collar professions Aki Ito (Insider) also has articles about these topics but it begs the question around who is actually going to do the work when we get rid of all these jobs/people and don't focus on bringing in the next generation of employees, and for that matter, how will we retain the knowledge, skills (tacit and real) when those people either leave or are shown the door?

2) In your parent's perspective, maybe perhaps under point #2 (and also in the final section) I have always advocated for providing students and early career professionals for a general awareness and education around career readiness/career skills - we all know that the first job you get is not going to be the last one you get (same for career) so I think we should be doing more to teach students and young professionals those skills that help with career experimentation, exploration, developing social capital, and curiosity driven learning.

Finally, on the broader topic, Joe Fuller (Future of Work Project at Harvard Business School and HBS Professor, ) recently put out some recent research around how GenAI is reshaping the concept of expertise across various professions, making it harder for some people to join new professions (perhaps where Gen Z/Alpha should stay away) and easier for others to onboard into professions (potential attractive opportunities) - It's worth checking out and fits nicely with the theme of this article --> https://hbr.org/2025/03/how-gen-ai-could-change-the-value-of-expertise

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